These were but the weaknesses of
girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was
not exempted.

*

For even in love there are unlovely humours; ambiguous
acts, unpardonable words, may yet have sprung from a kind
sentiment. If the injured one could read your heart,
you may be sure that he would understand and pardon;
but, alas! the heart cannot be shown--it has to be
demonstrated in words.

*

There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a
young woman fits in a man's mind, and stays there, and
he could never tell you why; it just seems it was the
thing he wanted.

*

There are many matters in which you may waylay Destiny, and
bid him stand and deliver. Hard work, high thinking,
adventurous excitement, and a great deal more that forms a
part of this or the other person's spiritual bill of fare,
are within the reach of almost any one who can dare a
little and be patient. But it is by no means in the way of
every one to fall in love....A wet rag goes safely by the
fire; and if a man is blind, he cannot expect to be much
impressed by romantic scenery. Apart from all this, many
lovable people miss each other in the world, or meet under
some unfavourable star.

*

To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in
love, most people would die unwed; and among the others,
there would be not a few tumultuous households. The Lion
is the King of Beasts, but he is scarcely suitable for a
domestic pet. In the same way, I suspect love is rather
too violent a passion to make, in all cases, a good
domestic sentiment. Like other violent excitements, it
throws up not only what is best, but what is worst and
smallest, in men's characters. Just as some people are
malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent under the
influence of religious feeling, some are moody, jealous,
and exacting when they are in love, who are honest,
downright, good-hearted fellows enough in the everyday
affairs and humours of the world.

*

There is only one event in life which really astonishes a
man and startles him out of his prepared opinions.
Everything else befalls him very much as he expected.
Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable variety indeed,
but with little that is either startling or intense; they
form together no more than a sort of background, or running
accompaniment to the man's own reflections; and he falls
naturally into a cool, curious, and smiling habit of mind,
and builds himself up in a conception of life which expects
to-morrow to be after the pattern of to-day and yesterday.
He may be accustomed to the vagaries of his friend and
acquaintances under the influence of love. He may sometime
look forward to it for himself with an incomprehensible
expectation. But it is a subject in which neither
intuition nor the behaviour of others will help the
philosopher to the truth. There is probably nothing
rightly thought or rightly written on this matter of love
that is not a piece of the person's experience.

*

It is the property of things seen for the first time, or
for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring,
to re-awaken in us the sharp edge of sense, and that
impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out
of life with the coming years; but the sight of a loved
face is what renews a man's character from the fountain
upwards.

*

Nothing is given for nothing in this world; there can be no
true love, even on your own side, without devotion;
devotion is the exercise of love, by which it grows; but if
you will give enough of that, if you will pay the price in
a sufficient 'amount of what you call life,' why then,
indeed, whether with wife or comrade, you may have months
and even years of such easy, natural, pleasurable, and yet
improving intercourse as shall make time a moment and
kindness a delight.

*

Love is not blind, nor yet forgiving. 'O yes, believe me,'
as the song says, 'Love has eyes!' The nearer the
intimacy, the more cuttingly do we feel the unworthiness of
those we love; and because you love one, and would die for
that love to-morrow, you have not forgiven, and you never
will forgive that friend's misconduct.